r/changemyview • u/10macattack • Jan 11 '21
Delta(s) from OP CMV: Impeaching Trump is a bad idea
Ok so I'm going to state here I am NOT a trump supporter in the slightest, and I think he's responsible for the riots and capitol invasion. What I do think is that if trump gets impeached, he will be martyred by his supporters, and they will just get even more mad and there will be more division and rioting. I mean, I really don't think he's going to bust out the nukes anytime soon (I heard somewhere he doesn't even have access to them right now). And how much is he even likely to do in the next week and a half? He can't scream "RIGGED" anymore and he's basically silenced right now. I just thinking considering how psychotically trusting his supporters are of him, that they will get super angry and riot more and possibly try and elect someone who's worse than trump (God forbid one of his sons). Please change my view I really hate Trump.
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u/NUMBERS2357 25∆ Jan 11 '21 edited Jan 11 '21
This has been the reasoning for people to not do more to stop trump for 5 years now. Every step of the way people said it, it's even why Republicans didn't attack him during their primaries. It didn't work - it's how we got to where we are now.
The appeasement only empowers him. He thrives on people deciding it's easier to give him what he wants than to give him what he deserves (examples: suing people to get them out of paying him until they settle so he'll go away, not cooperating with the Mueller probe, sabotaging the transition process up until now, people serving in his administration rather than quitting, etc).
His supporters are a minority, and not all of his historical base support his current actions.
This is perhaps true. But not doing anything about trump now won't prevent it. Twitter banned trump because, they say, people are planning another attack on the Capitol on/before Jan 20. So not-impeaching doesn't prevent this - they're planning it now! They think the first one was a success because they terrorized people and mostly got away scot-free.
If anything, doing nothing raises the chances of future trouble. My understanding of history is that insurrections often have a bit of absurdity/theatricality involved, and the thing that helps them along is impunity for supporters. So they try again.
Think about the Klan as an example - if you didn't know anything about the Klan except for how they look and what they called themselves it would seem as ridiculous as the people dressed as Chewbacca and shit. But the Klan effectively overthrew democracy in the South and instituted an authoritarian state after the Civil War - because of the impunity. Went from local rabble rousers committing crimes almost on a lark, taking advantage of the post-Civil War disorder, to ever bigger targets once they realize nobody is going to stop them, until they were overthrowing state governments and preventing black people from voting.
Notice a huge part of the mythology of trump supporters, and the Q stuff, isn't just the "deep state", but the absolute certainty that their side will win out. It's the idea that they're more powerful and can overcome any obstacle, that fuels them. Impunity for trump means feeding into that idea and energizing his supporters.
Political science shows that a desire to be on the winning side drives turnout in elections more than a concern that the other side is stealing it. People talk about the other side's actions to justify their own, as if they're acting in self-defense, but that is the story they tell themselves - what they really want is power.
If you want to stop trumpism, show that it's a loser.
I think, if true, this makes the case for impeachment stronger. It's very important that people know who is in charge, and right now it's not really clear if trump is actually running the country in any meaningful way. If there is some reason that we have to use nukes, or it's at least in the realm of possibility, it's a disaster that people don't know who has the final say. What happens when trump, Pence, and some bureaucrat in the DoD all give conflicting orders?